Scholarship Interview

My wonderful parents bought me a shiny new laptop for my birthday :), meaning the lost laptop cable saga has drawn to an end, which is just as well because it was a "Time" laptop and it is pretty difficult to get your hands on a cable for one of those these days...

Anyway, last week I had my interview with Middle Temple for a Scholarship. It was nowhere near as terrifying an experience as I was expecting, particularly based on the horror stories a friend of mine had told me about her interview last year.

I went into a room with three panel members: A Chancery Judge, a Chancery Barrister (Eek!) and a Criminal Silk. I was horrified when the chair told me that the two of them were Chancery lawyers, and considered walking out there and then, but thankfully, the Criminal Silk took over the interview and asked me about Family and Criminal Law.

I was asked why I was interested in Family Law, where I thought the line should be drawn with regards to getting into the emotions of Family cases and whether or not I thought the Privacy of Care cases should be lifted. I answered with a resounding NO and then had to argue my position. I think I handled that bit quite well, but it is impossible to tell really, I at least hung on to my convictions and was able to justify my opinion, so hopefully that was what they were looking for.

I was then asked about my thoughts on the Heathrow robbery trial and whether or not I thought Juries should be replaced by judges in all criminal trials, I talked about complex fraud, dumbfounded juries and then about the division of the tribunal of fact and law, inadmissible evidence and the importance of being tried by ones peers and concluded that I wasn't totally decided on the issue.

Then, a question that really threw me: Imagine you are producing a short film for Middle Temple to be targeted at university students to encourage them to come to the Bar, what important messages would you put across?

To be honest, I am slightly concerned that I may have gone on a bit too much about accessibility, and about preconceptions within society that the Bar is not accessible to everyone, despite the efforts made by the Bar to dispel this. However the panel did at least seem interested in what I was saying, I just hope I wasn't on my soapbox too much.... :s The truth is, I was trying to figure out what they wanted to hear and not thinking enough about what I wanted to say, and as soon as I worried about what they wanted me to say, my mind started to cloud over and I may have gone on a bit of a ramble. I did pull myself out though, in good time I hope, so I don't think it went all that badly.

The other 2 panel members decided that they didn't need to ask me anything else, the chancery barrister said that she thought we'd covered a lot of interesting ground and there was no need to ask anything else. Is that a good sign? Who knows. But it did throw me because I had been expecting questions from each of them and so directed all of my answers at the member that had asked the questions and not really at the other 2. Hopefully that wont count against me too much though.

With that the interview was over and I spent the rest of the day in shock, trying to process the fact that it had finished. Now I just have to wait for the results. Fingers Crossed!